As arts organizations make post-pandemic plans, they are struggling to find the right balance between optimism and the realities of reduced staff, revenue, and relevance. Enter strategy and communications guru David Resnicow, whose eponymous firm has for decades pulled arts organizations out of controversy, tilted institutional missions and rhetoric away from self-congratulation, and advised boards and staff on ways to privilege substance, ethics, and civic impact over empty spectacles,...

Imagine being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs as easily as the back of a cereal box. This week we turn to Dr. Peter Dorman, one of the world’s most accomplished Egyptologists, to shed light on his background and training, his time as a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Tutankhamun exhibition, and his path from a naval officer in the Pacific to a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, to his years in Luxor, and then as a university president in Beirut, and now a...

One of the leading dealers in Old Master paintings and 19th century art is Alan Salz, director and head of paintings and drawings at Didier Aaron. We grapple with contemporary art’s domination of the art market, and come out with a note of optimism about interest in pictures from the past. Along the way we touch on the TEFAF art fair, the attribution of the Salvator Mundi to Leonardo da Vinci, what stops him in his tracks, the challenges of establishing authenticity and assessing condition,...

“A $7 Billion Philanthropic Force.” That’s an artnet headline describing artist-endowed foundations, and this episode sheds light on the leader of not one but two of them. Sarah C. Bancroft is Executive Director of the James Rosenquist Foundation and President of the Board of Directors of The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. She discusses her reliance on the Aspen Institute’s Artist Endowed Foundations Initiative, led by Christine Vincent, as well as recounting the core activities of these...

We check in with Dr. Vishakha Desai about her soon-to-be-released new book, World as Family: A Journey of Multi-Rooted Belongings (Columbia University Press). It’s part memoir, part exhortation to connect across borders, both geographical and attitudinal. Our conversation ranges from the pandemic’s hold over India to her beginnings in the museum field, the need for Americans to tolerate ambiguity, cultural appropriation, globalism v. nationalism, restitution of cultural heritage, the sunset...

If after all the ink spilled on the topic of #deaccessioning, you’re still unclear what the fuss is about, here’s a short summary of the concerns of most art museum directors, excerpted from a presentation I recently made to the Federal Bar Association. We go back to the landmark decision in 1993 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to restrict the proceeds of art sales to buying new art, the softening of its stance in 2019, and the temporary lifting of restrictions against the use of...

Dany Khosrovani tells the truth—truth in branding, marketing, and advertising. Founder in 2017 of The DKG Perspective, a consultancy for CEOs who are at crossroads, she previously spent decades at leading agencies including J. Walter Thompson, Bates Worldwide and Young & Rubicam, and her clients were top-tier companies. Oxford-trained, she shares a fresh and candid assessment of the need for a moral framework for museums, leadership challenges in the face of mounting public criticism of...

In this episode we turn to an accomplished chronicler of our times. Michael Shnayerson is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects, including “Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art,” which lays bare secrets of the largest unregulated financial market in the world. His wide-ranging interests have taken him into multiple facets of the 20th century—including laboratories combating disease, Harry Belafonte’s...

Raising money to support the arts is demanding in the best of times—let alone during a pandemic, and when so many are focused on social and racial justice. Our guest Nina Diefenbach is Senior Vice President and Deputy Director for Advancement at @The_Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. A century ago, Dr. Barnes had an abiding commitment to supporting his African American employees and students at @LincolnUofPA, the nation's first degree-granting #HBCU, and we learn how the Barnes has adapted...

Museum directors and curators get the credit when exhibitions or collections open, but what about the museum designers? Look no further. We turn to one of the world’s leading exhibition designers, Dinah Casson. Her design partnership with Roger Mann since 1984, called Casson Mann, has completed high-profile assignments in the UK, US, Russia, Italy and the Middle East. We dip into her new book, titled Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, published by Lund Humphries, and learn...

We check in with Nina Del Rio, Vice Chairman, Americas, at Sotheby’s, for an inside look at how the art market performed during the past year. She concurs with recent assessments of a drop in market volume, but contends that the bottom line wasn’t as affected as all might assume. We delve into how objects make their way into private sales versus auctions, a farewell to printed auction catalogues, a surprising prediction about the future of glamorous in-person evening sales, the impact of NFTs...

There are endlessly conflicting views about cultural authority these days. For perspective we need an enlightened scholar to sort it out--and find her in Sarah Lawrence College Professor Jerrilynn Dodds. From the inapposite definitions of Islamic and “Western” art and architecture permeating our language, to the decolonization of the curriculum, we touch on Spain’s medieval history, the mythology of a common European identity, the misguided trope of American ‘exceptionalism’, why Hagia...

Miami is a harbinger of changing demographics in the United States, and we’re lucky to have as today’s guest Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our conversation ranges from PAMM’s navigation of the pandemic to the impact of Black Lives Matter on art museums, the need for staff and boards to reflect a museum’s community, the representation of...

We head to the UK to hear from Sir Charles Saumarez Smith about his new book The Art Museum in Modern Times. Former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Royal Academy, he reflects on contests of authority bearing down on museum leaders, ranging from the influence of private wealth, to restitution claims, the assault on the canon of art history, and the failure of museums to address the legacy of slavery and prevailing discrimination. He discusses the...

Bruce Mau is a globally renowned problem-solver. In this episode we touch on some of his past and upcoming achievements, including a new documentary about his extraordinary influence in the design sector and beyond, to have its world premiere at the upcoming SXSW. We discuss his insights in Designing for the Five Senses, his new book MC24, his childhood in Canada, the origins of his landmark exhibition and publication Massive Change, memorable experiences of working with globally renowned...

Dr. Lisa Freiman reflects on the recent forced resignation of the chief executive of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (for now clinging to the nickname @newfields) along with her major exhibition of the work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, her role as Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion in the 2011 Venice Biennale, which presented new works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Alfredo Jaar’s extraordinary Park of the Laments in the 100-acre sculpture park she devised, and a recent project...

It's hard to run a museum at any time, let alone during a pandemic. In this episode we glean some wisdom from Brian Ferriso, long-serving director of the Portland Art Museum. We cover the recent spate of deaccessioning among museums, the quest for updated thinking about museum goals, his focus on contributed versus earned income, the need for strategy in making new acquisitions, some exhibitions that have resonated with his audience, and the particulars of running a museum in the Pacific...

Art museum directors are caught up in competing travails, from financial shortfalls to racial reckoning to ill-advised deaccessioning. But talented curators across the U.S. are still managing to bring artistic talent to the fore, and Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, is among the museum field’s most imaginative, capable, and humane. We retrace her steps at the leading museums in New York to her adopted state of Texas, with detours to...

The digitally inclined will feast on this conversation with Robert Stein, among the art world’s most insightful and accomplished protagonists, who has conjured up and implemented innovative practices affecting museumgoers around the globe, both online and in person. We caught up with him during his first month as the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer, and covered a host of topics, from virtual museum experiences during the pandemic to new research in the...

Museum directors are juggling more than ever before, and few as ably as Susan M. Taylor, the Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art since 2010. We retrace the beginning of her tenure, five years after Hurricane Katrina, and fast forward to the city’s appeal to international visitors, her 6 ½-acre expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, increased appointments of women museum directors, how she has addressed challenges in the aftermath of George...

So you’re up all night, wondering: Should I build an art museum? Before you hire an architect, best to start by calling Rich Cherry, Managing Partner at Museum Operations. He’s served as an executive director, COO, deputy director, CTO and CIO at several leading organizations, from the Albright-Knox to the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC), and designed and built new museums and non-profits from the ground up, including the Broad Art Museum and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures....

Nostalgic for a nation of laws, not of men? In eager anticipation of a Justice Department dedicated to something other than xenophobia and the promotion of imperial rule, we turn to intellectual property guru Jaime Michael Wolf, an attorney who sorts out claims and counter-claims involving publishers, artists and their estates, designers and even chefs. We cover social media’s damnation of memory issued to the soon-to-be-evicted tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, how copyright is adapting to...

“Be kind rewind” is what video rental stores used to implore their customers before VHS tapes were returned. Since the end of the year is finally here, we’re replaying memorable snippets from some of 2020’s guests on the podcast, along with thoughts about the arts in the United States, as massive quantities of sage are being readied for cleansing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and while we’re all lining up for a vaccine. With sincere thanks to all our guests, here’s to a new start in January.

Art comes in all shapes and sizes--and sometimes it shows up on your screen. To separate the digital wheat from the chaff we turn to one of the world’s leading authorities in the field, Christiane Paul, author of Digital Art (Thames & Hudson), now in its 3rd edition. Prof. Paul is Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York, and Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American...

Many museums have emulated commercial attractions over the last generation—and now find themselves struggling back to life during the pandemic with reduced buzz, attendance, and contributions. For solutions we go to the source: a top advertising expert, Brad Brinegar, Chairman of McKinney, to help get their messaging aligned with these exceptional circumstances. He is predictably averse to thinking of museums as commercial preserves, and instead prescribes clever ways of reaching audiences,...